Are Modern Drivers damaging the body?

Public Forum—Concepts in Advanced Ball Striking
1

Jesse sent this over to me….

Some interesting observations. Not sure who authored this…. but some food for thought..

The real mechanics (plain English)

:one: A longer club = a longer lever

At 45.5″, the driver head is:

  • farther from your body

  • moving faster

  • creating more centrifugal force

That force has to be managed somewhere.

If your core and hips can’t fully absorb it (especially during a back rebuild), your lumbar spine becomes the shock absorber.

That’s not its job.

:two: Longer driver forces “reach” at the top

With a long driver, most players (even good ones):

  • reach a little more at the top

  • lose a bit of ribcage stack

  • subtly extend or arch the lower back

You don’t feel this consciously — but your nervous system does.

Your body says:

“I need to protect myself.”

Protection = tension.

:three: Tension + speed = pain

Once tension shows up:

  • rotation becomes restricted

  • the swing becomes more arms + back

  • the spine resists rotation instead of allowing it

So now you’re swinging a fast, long lever against a guarded spine.

That’s the perfect recipe for:

  • soreness

  • sharp twinges

  • or “it just doesn’t feel right”

:four: Timing stress = subconscious bracing

Long drivers are timing clubs.

Your brain knows:

“If I’m late or early, this goes sideways.”

That awareness alone causes:

  • grip pressure to increase

  • core to stiffen

  • back muscles to brace

Even before you swing.

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2

Looks terrifically unscientific. They need to provide some evidence and some of the claims don’t even make sense.

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3

Apparently this was produced by Chat GPT…

That’s all I know.

I don’t have experience with long modern lightweight drivers… because I don’t want the drive to be either longer of lighter. Longer too hard to control… lighter, not going to be able to engage that with the bigger muscles properly. Fly swatting with arms and hands isn’t supported by any of the great ball strikers.

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4

Who’s Jesse? Yes, looks like an AI generated piece, much the same style that Slinger72 first offered in another thread a few days ago. k2baloo is poised over target here.

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5

Interesting take but some things stood out to me

  1. A modern longer driver at 45.5 inches still will weigh less than a classic 43.5 inch driver less mass less potential stress on the body.

  2. If a player is using cohesive body tension then they will not be increasing as much tension and pressure as one might think, they will be having accumulated tension and pressure which the body actually responds well to.

  3. longer drivers cause players to reach at the top even good ones, statistically speaking that’s not an accurate statement because we can look at the current crop of tour players and they are not reaching at the top and with rank and file amateur players they barely are making a full rotation due to the dreaded hit impulse.

  4. Finally the body will only go as fast as it can handle the deceleration part of the motion so even with a shorter drivers if the player has not trained the muscles that contribute high percentages to deceleration the body will go into protection mode, if a player pushes through protection mode they will incur what we call overuse injuries and that can happen with a modern driver or a classic driver.

What I have realized about ChatGPT is that it is only as good as the prompts that are given to the system. If you ask it a simple question it will generate very generic feedback but when you increase the prompts to dive deeper you can get some solid reliable feedback. I would have asked ChatGPT another 3-4 questions to weed out the surface information that was given in this example personally.

6

Chat GPT is the frying pan driver of thinking.

Easier to gets results in the short term, but at the end of the day it rots your ability to break through to actual, useful understanding.

Outsourcing the work to technology isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be…

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